Mayoral hopeful Carl DeMaio and his partner Johnathan Hale left their house for the short walk to the polls near their house in Rancho Bernardo.
— John Gibbins

Republican Carl DeMaio ran for mayor with a “Roadmap to Recovery” for San Diego. Having lost the race in a wave of Democratic successes on Nov. 6, he’s now formulating a plan he says is needed for the GOP to recover.

DeMaio is speaking candidly about his 3 percentage point loss to Democratic Mayor-elect Bob Filner, saying the outcome provides important insights for the beleaguered California Republican Party. He says the state party faces a crisis years in the making and even more severe than the challenges confronting the national GOP.

“In the Republican Party, they are freaked out, they are depressed,” DeMaio said in an interview with U-T San Diego. “But in losses, if you analyze and learn, it can be a creative time, a time of renewal, rebirth. That needs to start now.”

DeMaio says his campaign did as well as it could and outperformed Republican registration in the city by 21 percentage points with support from a broad base of social conservatives as well as a significant number of independents and Democrats.

DeMaio credits his relative success and that of the party locally to putting aside social issues and focusing on topics that unite rather than divide — financial reform and making government work. He suggests the same approach for the party elsewhere.

“What I saw was that many social conservatives were able to make progress and were comfortable supporting me even though I was gay because of the agenda I was offering,” he said. “And Democrats were willing to support me even though I was a Republican because of the agenda I was offering. But in the Latino community and in the LGBT community, the party label seemed to be the sticking point.”

In the interview, DeMaio said he had no regrets about the way he conducted his campaign. He described receiving about a dozen letters from gay high school students — some still in the closet — telling him how inspired and proud they were of his candidacy.

“It made it all worth it,” he said. “If I can serve as a role model, if I can break some of those barriers and overcome some of the biases and labels, it’s certainly progress.”

DeMaio is calling for “New Republicans” to embrace a reform agenda and commit to making government work, not just dismantling it. He suggests the party become more inclusive and more aggressively court the next generation of voters.

“Part of it is challenging the party to get beyond its comfort zone: the old white men syndrome of people who always agree with you and think like you,” he said. “We need to start exploring these other communities and listening and absorbing what their aspirations and their hopes and their dreams are. What you’ll find is there’s a lot more common ground and that then opens up the conversation for presenting your ideas and perhaps getting support.”

DeMaio says he had problems with last-minute voters who don’t closely follow the news, skew younger and tend to get their information from websites and social media.